Born Again!

[narcosis]

Add me to the list of converts. After twenty years of diving at all levels, always looking for the latest gear and pursuing the future of diving, I've finally found what I was looking for - by going back! I thought my old DA was only good for cleaning the pool until I stumbled on VDH and the magic of Bryan and Luis. I just had Bryan rebuild and update my old Mistral and DA. WOW! Beautiful craftsmanship and my PHX HPR breathes as easy as my (old) Atomic. Diving with this stuff makes going down FUN again. I think I am about to develop a new "bad habit"! Thank you VDH.

[21]

APPARENTLY THE LIGHT CAME ON~

Congrats from Cen Cal...

Tell us about your self?..location, experience,etc

SDM

[Herman]

Welcome to the board and DH diving. What part of the world are you in, there may be some of us near you. Always good to add another vintage buddy.

[narcosis]

I am located in Boulder city Nevada, just outside of Las Vegas and directly adjacent to Lake Mead where we do most of our local diving. In partnership with the late CMDR Jim Williams USN ret., my sons and I operated Diving Services Consultants teaching mixed gases to commercial and recreational divers. We also did some rebreather work. Jim was a real scuba pioneer and mentor to countless divers and after he died unexpectedly ,we were all pretty heart-broken and we just turned away from the business. Around that time Bret Gilliam was building the infrastructure of SDI. He is very progressive as an educator so when he offered me the opportunity to write the first instructor manual for SDI, I jumped at it. Lots of fun because several new ideas like teaching computers, instead of tables, to open water divers were incorporated! I know, I know - that’s the opposite of what we are doing here but it simplified things and worked well for entry level divers. After that, I decided to address the frustration and confusion of the 8 hour Marathon of teaching medic–first aid to open water divers, by developing a life-saving program called CPROX (for CPR and O2) which shortened the teaching time considerably and still received Coast Guard approval. Along the way I added a simplified first aid/defibrillation segment to make the program (CPROX 1stAED) more useful but still less than 1/2 the time. Program is available through SDI/TDI. My real job keeps me from diving as much as I want to but I do incorporate a steady stream of diving medical evaluations and consultations for government (mainly USBR, Park Service), commercial, and recreational divers. I’ve had my share on the teaching side of the diving world but I really envy many of you dive gorillas who post here for the incredible experiences you’ve had like Truk and the Great Lakes. I think I’d feel like a beginner all over again getting ready to dive a wreck in Lake Michigan on a cold winters day. But I do plan to find out some day! In the meantime, I’m going to keep playing with these double hose regs.

[Ron]

That's awesome! Tell us about yourself.